Ernest Pintoff
Ernest Pintoff, born in 1931 in Watertown, Connecticut, made his mark as both a writer and director in the realm of cult cinema. His directorial work on Blade (1973) showcases his ability to blend genre elements with a distinctive narrative style. Pintoff's background as a jazz trumpeter and his early career in animation, including an Oscar-winning short, laid the groundwork for his pivot to live-action films. With Blade, he carved a niche in exploitation cinema, contributing to the film's gritty aesthetic and raw storytelling.
Blade
A "psycho-karate killer" is prowling the streets and murdering innocent women, at least that's what the advertising would have us believe. When Melinda Powers (Jeanne Lange) is brutally murdered in her apartment building hallway, her senator father (William Prince, SACCO & VANZETTI) would like to believe that the murderer is her black boyfriend Henry Watson (Ted Lange, TV's THE LOVE BOAT) and he is less than pleased to discover that Jimmy Blade (John Marley, THE GODFATHER) is on the case. Then the prostitute (Raina Barret, STIGMA) who ran into the killer that night is also murdered while Watson is in jail, so Powers' aide Steiner (Keene Curtis, SLIVER) pressures Blade's boss Rearden (John Schuck, McCABE & MRS. MILLER) to rush Blade's retirement and Quincy (Michael Maguire, BEYOND DEATH’S DOOR), the detective investigating the prostitute's death, to find no connection between her murder and that of Melinda. Meanwhile, secretary Joanne Connors (Karen Machon) has grown suspicious of new account executive Frederick Peterson (Jon Cypher, FOOD OF THE GODS) and asks her friend Gail (Rue McClanahan, TV's MAUDE) to look into his past (which includes a court-marshalling). When Peterson learns that Blade is investigating the case, he begins to stalk him and his wife (Kathryn Walker, SLAP SHOT). BLADE is a flat-out awful DIRTY HARRY wannabe. John Cacavas' (HORROR EXPRESS) score is too classy for the flat photography, bare sound design, abrupt editing, and tension-free confrontations. The plot is ridiculously convoluted with several characters and plot threads introduced and then dropped (including threats from a Black Panther-esque contact of Blade's played by Morgan Freeman) and some seemingly improvised dialogue scenes just fizzle out. Joe Santos (TV's THE SOPRANOS) has the pretty thankless role as Blade’s partner.
